International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. http://iac2013.uitm.edu.my ISBN 978-983-41527-7-2 Dissertations Acknowledgment Pattern of Malaysian Post Graduates Juliana Mohd Nor 1 Ngo Kea Leng2 Mohd Ariff Nafizi Ibrahim2 Che Wan Khalidawaty Khalid2 Abstract It has been said that text analysis is a field of study that could yield rich results to interested researchers. This study in particular examines a genre of writing consisting of acknowledgement in Malaysians post graduates dissertations. It focuses on the structure of masters’ dissertations acknowledgement written by Malaysian post graduates students from various races in Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to examine Malaysian post graduates’ acknowledgement patterns, identify insertions of religious element as well as find other distinctions in the pattern that may make it similar or distinctive to other findings found by other researchers. The method of this study is by the comparison of structure. The corpus of this study consists of selected acknowledgements gathered from several Malaysian universities e-print databases. The results show that there are similarities but also some differences between the patterns studied. It is acknowledged by the researchers that aside from the indirect rhetorical nature of Asian writers, there could also be other considerations that could have influenced the results of the findings. Keywords: Acknowledgement pattern; distinctions; similarities; indirect rhetoric; post graduates. Introduction Background of the study Writing a dissertation is hard work and one is never completed without assistance from others. Thus it is only right and proper to acknowledge these assistance and this action is a seemingly agreed-must-have-component of dissertations everywhere. Dissertations acknowledgement writers though, are limited, in the sense that they are only able to write about only limited number of pages of acknowledgement per dissertation. Being that most people only have one or 1 Juliana Mohd Nor, UiTM Kuala Terengganu, Academy of Language Studies, julia073@tganu.uitm.edu.my; Ngo Kea Leng, UiTM Kuala Terengganu, Mohd Ariff Nafizi Ibrahim, Che Wan Khalidawaty Khalid, Academy of Language Studies and Faculty of Business Studies, klngo@tganu.uitm.edu.my, mohda141@tganu.uitm.edu.my, chewa485@tganu.uitm.edu.my; 2 2 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. two Masters or Doctoral degree dissertation to produce in one lifetime, this render the writing of acknowledgement as a complicated task due to the fact that most writers tend to want to thank everyone. Nevertheless, this complicated task is made easier by the fact that there is actually a common sense of agreement on the proper structure and content of the thesis acknowledgement. Studies done Al Ali (2006) Jawanees, Salihah & Faizah (2009) as well as those of Zhang (2012), Lasaky (2011) as well as Yang (2012) and Mohammad Javad (2013), are examples of researches that have been done previously involving the structure of acknowledgement. With most of those studies, it begun when Hyland (2004) study proposed a move that tried to define the generic structure of acknowledgement. The proposed move became a popular method of analysis and led to the production of other researches highlighting acknowledgement as a genre of writing. Earlier research like one did by Gianoni (2002) which contrasted native and nonnative acknowledgements, also becomes a source of reference for examining how one genre of writing can be similar and different with and from each other. Gianoni (2002) in particular established the general idea that generic frameworks reverberate across linguistic borders but also reinforce the national proclivities of the disciplinary communities they serve Literature Review Analysis of acknowledgement writing whether by its structure or its linguistics features is a field of study within the Contrastive Discourse Analysis field of study. Earlier proponents of this study are distinguished figures such as John Malcolm Swales and the American Applied Linguist John Kaplan. Their work nurtured interest in the study of contrastive discourse analysis and led to the growth of many discourse based researches. Swales’s work in particular increases attention to other academic genres as many researchers try to apply his suggested idea genre as consisting of a framework. They try to come up with a different framework that best explain their studied genre of writing (Mohsenzadeh 2013). Hyland (2004) framework is one such example. When Hyland proposed his generic structure model of acknowledgement pattern in 2004, his model provides a standard to which written acknowledgement are compared to. From his model, various other researches began to compare and develop a more precise idea of the schematic structure of acknowledgement patterns. In his article, Hyland, himself admitted the necessity of studying acknowledgement written in other languages and with other situational factors such as age and experience (2004). Thus from that point on other studies of 3 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. acknowledgement have explored other acknowledgement written by others from different situational backgrounds that may affect the finding that led Hyland to proposed his generic structure model of acknowledgement pattern in 2004. One such study was carried out by Al Ali in 2006. His study determines that the moves structures determined by Hyland’s proposed scheme are influences by the writers own academic values, socio-cultural practices, and personal identity of the writer. This means that there are variations to the moves aside to the one proposed. Al Ali in particular found that participants of his study, who were Moslems, inserted a ‘Thanking God’ moves within the acknowledgement. This for him supported the notion that cultural and social context may play a role in shaping the structure and content of an acknowledgement. A Malaysian study conducted by Nor Jawanees et al (2009) which studied Malaysian Muslim student acknowledgements also noted the same finding as Al Ali’s. Nor Jawanees et al (2009) also found that participants of her study actually begin their acknowledgement with a praying move instead of reflective comments on their research experience which is as proposed by Hyland in 2004. Furthermore, a study done by Zhang (2012) who studied acknowledgement pattern of Philippines, Chinese and American English variations, reported that contrary to Hyland’s proposed move, no reflecting moves were found in this particular study while the announcing moves were underrepresented. Aside from that, Zhang (2012) also found evidence of religious element (Bible Quotation) included in her participants’ acknowledgement. Zhang’s study significantly supported Al Ali (2006) and Nor Jawanees et al (2009) findings that noted religious element inclusion in acknowledgement written by students from certain backgrounds. A study done by Lasaky (2011) which compared Iranian and non native Iranian students acknowledgment, also noted the existence of the ‘thanking God’ step. It also stated that in comparison, there is a significance difference between the Iranian natives and the non native’s use of the ‘thanking God’ step. This according to the author could be attributed to religious conventions of Muslims Iranian who tend to start and end works by thanking God. A most recent study by Mohammad Javad (2013), which studied acknowledgement written in Persian language by native speakers of Persian compared to acknowledgement written by native speakers of English, also supported the finding. Mohammad Javad (2013) found that 80% of the Persian’s sample studied committed the ‘thanking God’ step. He too noted that influence of religion in the aspects of life of these writers and said that such finding can only be expected. In comparing the acknowledgement of the two different native speakers, he claims that both as much followed the norm as described in Hyland (2004) scheme. 4 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. Aside from this significant religious element, there are also findings in other studies that indicate acknowledgement writing can be influenced and therefore have some variations when compared cross-culturally. Yang (2012) who compared dissertations’ acknowledgement of Taiwanese authors based in Taiwan universities to Taiwanese authors based in universities in the U.S. reported that the acknowledgement pattern of these two Taiwanese authors acknowledgement mostly followed the structured proposed by Hyland in 2004. However Yang’s study noted that one major difference between the two is the fact that among the Taiwanese university dissertations acknowledgment, the reflecting moves is comparatively little in number. Taiwanese in U.S based universities, with numbers twice as high, have reflective moves in their acknowledgement. Also found is the relatively low number of U.S based students who committed to steps 3.1 which is the claiming responsibility for shortcomings of the dissertation. The findings of all the researches thus far have indeed shown that there are points of similarities as well as point of differences between dissertations written acknowledgment. The differences are more apparent if we take into considerations the different social background of the writers. The fact that most of these findings reflected the same result would indicate that other future research would also be finding the same conclusion. While that may be true it does not minimize the fact that most of these studies are limited in their own selves and thus future studies still need to be carried out because there are always gaps and information that can still discovered. Statement of the problem Dissertation acknowledgement may share the same purpose and that is to express the writer’s gratitude to all those involved in the writing of the dissertation. This however does not mean that all dissertations are the same. Hyland (2004) did a genre analysis study of acknowledgement pattern of Hong Kong graduates’ written research and claimed that acknowledgement pattern is identifiable by several moves. Subsequent studies by other researchers supported the claim. Most recent studies however suggested that acknowledgement pattern may vary depending on the socio cultural norms as well as etiquette of the acknowledgement writer. These studies however researched and compared acknowledgements of students in foreign universities and not in Malaysia. The one study carried out by Nor Jawanees et al (2009), studied only a number of Muslim Malaysian students. This research aims 5 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. to fill the gap and provide a wider and clearer picture regarding this genre of study involving Malaysians’ dissertation acknowledgements by examining Moslem Malaysians as well as Malaysian students of different racial background. Research Questions 1. What is the move structure of MA thesis acknowledgements in English as written by Malaysians post graduates students? 2. What religious elements were inserted into acknowledgement content of dissertations researched by Malaysians post graduates students? 3. What are the other variations that can be detected in Malaysian post graduates students acknowledgement as compared to Hyland’s proposed scheme? Method and Material Sample The corpus compiled for this study is collected from 4 different public universities in Malaysia. The choice of selection is confined to the selections of thesis available in the e-print databases made available by these universities. In total, there are altogether 160 samples collected, 40 from each university and from each race namely, Malay, Chinese, Indians and Others (Sabahan, Sarawakians & Foreign students). All of the items selected were written in English. The samples selected were from various departments and faculties at the four universities. It was not possible to collect from other universities as some universities did not made available the database to the public and some are too new and therefore have limited number of MA students. 6 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. The table below will sufficiently describe the distribution of the sample. University Universiti Sains Malaysia Universiti Malaya Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Universiti Putra Malaysia Total Malay Chinese Indian 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 40 40 40 Table 1 Distribution of sample Others 10 10 10 10 40 Total 40 40 40 40 160 Method of Analysis All of the samples were analyzed by using the moves structure identified by Hyland in 2004. Move 1 Move 2 Step 2.1 Step 2.2 Step 2.3 Step 2.4 Move 3 Step 3.1 Step 3.2 Introspective comment on the writer’s research experience. Thanking Move Mapping credit to individuals & institutions Presenting participants Introducing those to be thanked. Thanking for academic assistance Thanks for intellectual support, ideas, analysis, feedback, etc. Thanking for resources Thanks for data access & clerical, technical & financial support. Thanking for moral support Thanks for encouragement, friendship, sympathy, patience, etc. Announcing Move Public statement of responsibility & inspiration. Accepting Responsibility An assertion of authorial responsibility for flaws/errors. Dedicating the Thesis A formal dedication of the thesis to an individual(s) Table 2 Hyland (2004) Proposed Generic Acknowledgement Moves Reflecting Move The same data were then also compared to the other significant finding identified by other researchers which especially has religious connotations. Praying Move (Opening) Thanking God Moves Nor Jawanees et al (2009) Al Ali ( 2006) Nor Jawanees et al ( 2009) Lasaky (2011) Mohammad Javad (2013) Religious quotation Zhang (2012) Table 3 Religious element/influence in Acknowledgement Content 7 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. Results The result of this study is as shown and described in the tables below. RQ1: What is the move structure of MA thesis acknowledgements in English as written by Malaysian students of different races? Malay Move 1 Move 2 Move 3 Chinese Indian Others 2 3 4 Reflecting Move Thanking Move Step 2.1 9 13 10 Step 2.2 40 40 40 Step 2.3 37 40 38 Step 2.4 40 40 40 Announcing Move Step 3.1 0 0 1 Step 3.2 1 4 2 Table 4 Move structure compared to Hyland’s 2004 scheme 4 Total n (160) 12 12 40 34 34 44 160 149 154 0 1 1 8 From the above table it is found that the reflecting move is small in number for all Malaysian students of different races. Others had the highest move (4), followed by Chinese and Indian (3) and Malay had the least (2). Out of 160 samples, all students made their thanking moves for academic assistance. The same went with the thanking move for moral support with the exception for Others having short of 6 moves. Chinese had the highest (100%) thanking move for resources, followed by Indian (95%), Malay (93%) and Others (85%). Thanking move for presenting participants did not carry even one third of the Malaysian students of different races acknowledgements. Chinese acknowledgement is 32.5%, Others is 30%, Indian is 25%, and Malay is 23%. Also found for move 3, no Malay, Chinese and Others Malaysian students committed to accepting responsibility for flaws/errors. However, only one Indian writer is having the exception. Dedicating writers’ work to others is not popular among Malaysian students of different races. Only a small number dedicated their work. 8 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. RQ2: What religious elements were inserted into acknowledgement content of dissertations researched by Malaysians post graduates students? Malay Prayers Thanking God Religious Quotation Chinese Indian Others 12 4 10 126 0 5 0 0 0 Table 5 Religious element inclusion 2 15 1 Total n (160) 28 36 1 From the data which we collected we found that there were only 3 religious elements found in this study. There were the elements of Prayers, thanking God and the elements of the religious quotation. Out of 160 samples there were only 28 (17.5%) samples stated the element of Prayers in their acknowledgements. While 36 (22.5%) samples stated the element of Thanking God and only 1(0.6%) sample had the religious quotation element written in his/her dissertation acknowledgement. RQ3: What are the other variations that can be detected in Malaysian post graduates students acknowledgement as compared to Hyland’s proposed scheme? Malay Chinese Indian Others 2 2 3 Lack of reflecting moves 1 4 3 Lack of announcing moves Repetitive steps Move 2 Thanking Move Step 2.1 9 13 10 Step 2.2 40 42 40 Step 2.3 37 48 38 Step 2.4 42 48 40 6 1 1 Hope, wishes and prayer 0 1 0 Poetry quote 0 2 0 Named Table 6 Distinctive traits not fitting Hyland’s 2004 scheme 9 1 Total n (160) 16 9 12 40 34 34 1 0 0 44 162 157 164 9 1 2 The findings of the study also reported six other variants detected in those 160 acknowledgements. Those variants include the lack of reflecting and announcing moves in 25 (15.6%) acknowledgements, the insertion of hope, wishes, prayer and the writers’ names, both in 9 (5.6%) and 2 (1.25%) acknowledgments respectively, and only 1 (0.6%) acknowledgment with the insertion of poetry quote. However, a statistically significant variation was found to 9 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. occur in the repetitive steps of thanking move (steps 2.1 to 2.4) which mostly found in the acknowledgements written by the Chinese as compared to other races. Results By looking at the results shown in previous section, it is evident here that acknowledgement writing can vary and yet at the same time generally follow the structure proposed by Hyland in 2004.While this is not a surprising finding as other researchers have noted it as well (Al Ali 2006, Nor Jawanees et al 2009, Lasaky 2011, Zhang, 2012 & Yang 2012), it is important to highlight that with regard to Malaysian acknowledgement writers the style of writing is distinctive with the dispersion of religious element. Clearly here culture plays a big role. Asian writers do not regard their endeavor as free standing. For some if not most, their academic endeavor would not have come to fruition without Divine’s assistance. The same is finding is reported in studies done by Al Ali (2006), Lasaky (2011) as well as Mohammad Javad (2013). Although those studies specifically refer to Middle Eastern graduates’ acknowledgement writers who are most likely Muslims, this particular study shows that religious value can also be found in acknowledgement written by non-Muslims. While the finding did not provide significant number of acknowledgement with religious element included, it must be noted that religious element were found to be included in some acknowledgement regardless of the racial background of the writer. Furthermore, Malaysian post graduates dissertations acknowledgement also actually reflects a social norms and etiquette that also emphasized on family value along with other value such as academic obligation. Even though there are little difference in the number of steps for thanking moves for moral support compared to academic assistance, at some of the time it appears in the finding that the writers remembered to thank their family members first before thanking their academic supervisors. In some acknowledgements, thanking for moral support also appears repetitively even after the writer has already moved on to another step in the move structure. This is also true for other steps. There is a lack of uniformity in the order of use. Steps do not necessarily follow the order of academic first and personal last. Some of the times, the steps were even combined together whereby writers would thank their person or people for both academic and moral support. For example, “I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to 10 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. the chair of my supervisory committee …I am grateful to her for being patient and encouraging to me not only in my thesis but also in my work and in my health”. Other than that, there also seems to a casual flair to the writing in some of the acknowledgements. For example, paragraphing may not signify new movement but rather new group of people to thank. The new group of people though may or may not be personal or academically related to the writer. The order is not fixed nor is paragraph membership. For example, “Special thanks to Prof. Dr. Zainal Ariff, the Head of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Department and all the lecturers for their support and encouragement and made 4 years study in OMFS Department was a great moment in my career… To my beloved wife…and also to my parent...All sweet memories in this department were unforgettable” In one acknowledgement, the thanking move even goes to the bus driver who is otherwise an absolute stranger to the writer. Lack of uniformity in these writings indicates that there is no fixed rules and structure that were adhered to in the process of writing this acknowledgement. According to Lasaky (2011) this could be because these students only imitate acknowledgement written in other dissertation when planning to write their own. Thus there are variety in their interpretation and implementation of writing. Conclusions and recommendations There might be variation in acknowledgement pattern when studied across culture, it is nevertheless a writing that is supposed to be academic and therefore must portray a certain organized structure. If the variation is too varied, the genre will be in danger of losing its scholarly identity. Thus writers of acknowledgement must always be made aware of the “rhetorical importance of this genre and the ways they can structure their acknowledgements to promote a competent scholarly identity (Hyland, 2004, pg. 323). Writing dissertations acknowledgement is “not an opportunity for students to lay aside their academic persona and freely express themselves in inconsequential flourishes (Hyland and Tse 2004 pg. 273). Regardless, because it can be seen in the finding that variety and lack of uniformity in structure contribute to the variation in Malaysian acknowledgment such nature of writing should be should subject of further studies. Reasons and factors behind the variation should be examined in more details. 11 Juliana., Ngo, K. L., Mohd Ariff Nafizi., & Che Wan Khalidawaty. (2013). Dissertations acknowledgement pattern of Malaysian post graduates. International Academic Conference (IAC) 2013. References Al-Ali, M. (2006). Conveying academic and social identity in graduate dissertation acknowledgements. A conference paper presented at the 5th International AELFE Conference at Zaragoza. 14-16 September 2006. Cheng, W. (2012). A contrastive study of master thesis acknowledgements by Taiwanese and North American students. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2(1), 8-17. Giannoni D.S. (2002), Worlds of gratitude: a contrastive study of acknowledgment texts in English and Italian research articles, Applied Linguistics 23 (1) (2002), 1–31. Hyland, K. (2004). Graduates’ gratitude: The generic structure of dissertation acknowledgements. English for Specific Purposes, 23, 303-324. Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2004). “I would like to thank my supervisor” Acknowledgements in graduate dissertations. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14(2), 259-275. Lasaky, F.G. (2011). A contrastive study of generic organization of doctoral dissertation acknowledgements written by native and non-native (Iranian) students in applied linguistics. MJAL, 3 (2), 175-199. Mohammad Javad, M. (2013). Do Persian and English Dissertation Acknowledgments Accommodate Hyland’s Model: a Cross-Linguistic Study. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences. 3 (5). 534-547. Mohsenzadeh,H. (2013). Rhetorical Move Structure of Literature Book Prefaces in English and Persian. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences. 4 (4)317-323. Nor Jawanees, A.H., Salihah, A,. & Faizah, M. (2009). Variation in Acknowledgement Patterns of Ten Malay Degree and Master’s Dissertations : A Preliminary Study. A conference paper presented at the International Conference on Languages UPALS at Penang. 29 May 2009. Yang, W. (2012). Comparison of Gratitude across Context Variations: A Generic Analysis of Dissertation Acknowledgements Written by Taiwanese Authors in EFL and ESL Contexts. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature. 1 (5).131146 Zhang,.J.P. (2012) A Cross-Cultural Study of Generic Structure and Linguistic Patterns in MA Thesis Acknowledgements. The Asian ESP Journal. 8 (1). 141-165